There is opportunity for providers, payers, banks, financial networks, and healthcare clearinghouses to establish an interoperable healthcare payments “hub” that enables Straight Through Processing of healthcare financial transactions This hub is intended to demonstrate bottom line financial advantage to each of the counterparties and/or stakeholders involved.

Join this panel discussion to identify your risk and exposure to PHI disclosures

Attend this compelling panel webinar to learn why the healthcare legislation of HIPAA, ARRA/HITECH and safeguarding protected heath information (PHI) is so critical, what the ramifications may be of not meeting compliance, and what you can do to protect your organization and mitigate risk of PHI disclosure.

All financial institutions, including their suppliers, clients and other supporting stakeholders, are likely processing PHI and should be attend to learn more about:

The latest legislative regulations of HIPAA, ARRA, HITECH and other compliance mandates regarding financial institutions;
Potential ramifications of unlawful disclosure of PHI and how to prepare your organization;
Planning preparations to take so to mitigate the risk of PHI disclosure;
Clarification on requirements for business associates and covered entities;
Whether or not all financial institutions are “created equal” in addressing compliance issues;
Defining your organization’s risk tolerance; and
Details on organizations available to assist with addressing risk mitigation.

Lee Barrett, the Executive Director of the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), will host this session as moderator. He will be joined by a panel of financial services and legal professionals from the healthcare industry with HIPAA, ARRA/HITECH and PHI expertise to answer questions related to healthcare data privacy and security initiated by both the moderator and webinar attendee submissions.

I founded the group to connect people, facilitate knowledge sharing, and accelerate health-related business innovations by entrepreneurs, startups, and established companies. Helping entrepreneurs is something that I’m particularly passionate about. In this context, I am excited to announce that I am now a mentor at Blueprint Health, the health and wellness-focused startup accelerator based in New York City.

In a recent interview, Vinod Khosla – who just closed a new $1B investment fund – stated that he is a “venture assistant”, not a venture capitalist. The hands-on assistance his firm provides to entrepreneurs is a core component of his investment success. A case in point is Jawbone, which was about to go under when Vinod invested in it. Vinod’s partner, David Weiden, made a key introduction to AT&T, whose distribution channel enabled a massive growth in sales, thus saving the company. (It’s noteworthy that UP, the company’s newest product is, you guessed it, a personal connected health solution. Another portfolio company is ZocDoc, the OpenTable-like application for making healthcare appointments.)

Why does this matter? In the relatively chaotic and burgeoning digital health innovation space, the startups that succeed will most likely do so as a result of the hands-on assistance provided by mentors and investors, who partner with them and amplify their talents via strategic advice, key introductions, and the ability to foresee and help guide entrepreneurs through the inevitable pivot points that occur along the way.

In my evolution as a social and business entrepreneur, the Blueprint Health mentor role is a huge step forward and further validation of my efforts. I’m eager to focus my energy on helping entrepreneurs, starting with the inaugural class this January. This is not a full-time role and I’ll continue working with the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance, serving as a co-chair of the Healthcare Communications SIG at CommNexus San Diego and, of course, curating and building the Wireless Health LinkedIn group.

A brief overview of Blueprint Health:
Blueprint Health is a TechStars affiliated startup accelerator program based in NYC that helps early stage healthcare companies get started. Surround yourself with nearly 100 mentors – healthcare entrepreneurs, VCs and innovators – that want to help you succeed! Over the course of a 3 month program, we support entrepreneurs who are building innovative companies at the intersection of health and technology by providing capital, office space and, most critically, access to the most robust community of healthcare mentors of any accelerator program. We encourage you to learn more and to apply to our Winter program, which starts January 12th, by visiting http://www.blueprinthealth.org/

Help design the first financial node at the Interoperability Showcase in September…and see it featured next February at HIMSS12!

Ensure that your organization is poised for success – by being at the drawing board of this exciting new program. The HIMSS G7 agenda will focus on high-impact industry challenges such as:

ICD-10 5010 migration issues and solutions
Electronic integration of payment and remittance data (payer to bank to provider)
Convergence of financial and clinical information to support ACOs – especially at point of care
Identity integrity issues and solutions that leverage banking technologies and processes
Health Insurance Exchange challenges and resolutions
Attendance is limited so register early!
Exclusively for HIMSS Members.
$550 Attendance Fee
Register by contacting Ebony Morgan at emorgan@himss.org or 312-915-9249.

About the Venue:
The Vanderbilt Center for Better Health
is a specialized work environment that accelerates group planning – perfect for hosting the first G7 Roundtable. The Center utilizes a proven process that guides participants through high-value learning exercises with actionable results.

Haven’t been blogging much personal stuff lately — tweetin’ and Facing mainly (@ed_dodds, @conmergence, @project_network). HIMSS11 has happened; didn’t attend but really looking forward to news out of the 9th Annual Medical Banking Project sponsored Institute, especially the working being done by John Casillas, Jim St. Clair and Eric Cohen on things XBRLish as relates to healthcare and the World Bank/World Health Organization/global health related tangent re: mobile money, mHealth, and mPayments which Angela Dunbar is patiently encouraging. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the work that John Phelan and June St. John and a cast of other visionaries are producing, but let’s be honest about where my passion is ;)

Got news this week that vc4africa completed the first venture capital funding deal (market-fleas.com). Ben White et. al. are to be commended for taking the world wide web and making it an asset for African entrepreneurs.

Takeshi Utsumi’s Global University collaboration initiative chugs along as he seeks to extend the Global Early Warning System (GEWS) concept to African nations as the global broadband build out enables cluster clouds to crunch big data virtually anywhere.

The majority of the World Convention site rework has been completed. Some tweaking will be on-going. Julia Keith as the hub of cyber activities around Global Women Connecting has been enthusiastic about adopting and extending “all things over IP” comms tools and Gary Holloway continues to travel and meet folks from the global Campbell-Stone family of churches while facing the fundraising challenges all NPOs are dealing with (Deana’s staff [more like family, really] at United Cerebral Palsy of Middle Tennessee have this in spades with the consequences of the Nashville floods on area families and individuals who live with disabilities).

The Shepherds at Woodmont Hills have authorized an ad hoc committee to analyze and review all comms related activity that the congregation currently undergoes in hopes of “shepherding” all of our assets and processes into a more unified and effective approach re: our resources. I hope this will produce an “infrastructure” which will enable the Mission Committee to be as effective as possible re: it’s obligations to our various global colleagues.

“Open” groups continuing to grow on LinkedIn.

More folks investigating Results-Only Work Environments.

Interoperancy and hyperlocality affecting the eNews biz as well as the Edison-Carterification of smart phones and other similar devices.